PW's Dreadfleet

[pw]

Hi All, I recently picked up a copy of Dreadfleet (now easy to get cheap  ) and thought that a painting diary on here might be of interest to some of you and that it might help keep me motivated. My plan is to paint my way through the whole box set as fast as I can and so far I'm really enjoying it as there's plenty of variety in terms of models to get done and the fact that it's a finite project is a real bonus.

I'm following the standard GW scheme for pretty much everything (as far as my paints allow) and so far the step-by-step guides in White Dwarf are proving really handy (though they use a lot of washes which is slowing things down as I've got to wait for stuff to dry). It's also tricky as the paints I need aren't all available any more!

So, without further ado, here's where I'm up to after a week of work (by this I mean some scattered time between work/child care/other stuff, so probably about 5 hours). First up, three of the islands:







My first ship (I'm tackling the easiest ones first!):



And finally, some random tokens and a small wreck:



Next up, I'm painting the Skaven ship Scabarus (another easy one!).

Has any one else looked at Dreadfleet? I've no idea how it plays but the models are (I think) nice though I have seen someone describe them as looking like they came out of a Kinder Egg! There's also some potential to use bits as Warmaster terrain/monsters, and obviously it looks handy for Man O' War (which is why I bought it, I wanted the sea mat).

[schwager]

Great work, mate... they look awesome!
Really love your work on the rocks. They look ace.

It's great to see more people picking it up. I've only had two intro games myself, but it looks like a fun game. I mean, Warhammer Pirates, what's not to like?
Sure, the rules could probably do with some tweaking, but there are keen folks out there already working on that, I believe.

One thing that really puzzles me, though:
Why does everyone want to paint their Dreadfleet like GW did?
I don't think the GW colour schemes are that great... or ship-like, for that matter. Using historical references (or even Pirate movies) would make for much more interesting looking ships. That's just me, though.

I do hope that one day I will find time to paint mine, too 
Until then, I look forward to seeing more from you!

[spiritusXmachina]

Painting-Scheme: Well, that depends on how much time I have. Imo finding good colours is one of the hardest and time-consuming things. And to be honest I liked the GW-paintings.
With one exception: the Dancing Scimitar. That was the only one I chose different colors.

[Guthwine]

Beautiful! Its a shame GW just brought Dreadfleet as a box, they should have ditched Lord of the Rings and started a WHF naval battle game like Uncharted Seas.

Looking forward to see the Araby ship.

[Geep]

Looks like a very good start to your ships and islands. Looking forward to seeing the rest.

I had completely forgotten about dreadfleet- another thing to add to my project list

[BlackEd]

I played the game twice, and would love to play it some more.  It plays well, but the wind direction is highly variable -- but that fits in with the fluff.  One thing that I find hard to wrap my brain around is that the rules do not penalize you for moving into the wind (with a sailing ship).  If I read the rules right, it's only when the ship starts its move pointing into the wind does it have to check to see if it is "in irons".

Still, a fun game to play.  I have a Kraken I painted up.  The kids wanted to help me assemble them, and my daughter took it on herself to assemble 2 ships on her own.  However, neither kid wants to play or paint the ships.

[Dan_Lee]

I have played several games now and enjoyed them all. You can't take the game too serisoulsy but it's a lot of fun. It's got a good story too.

I painted all the models using the GW painting guide too (so I didn't spend ages deciding what colour to paint everything). Just as a warning, be careful when you paint the sails first then try to glue them in place later. A few of my ships were nearly ruined as I failed to assemble them quickly enough and the sails dried in the wrong place. I had to cut off the flaming scimitars sails and re-glue them.

Your models look good so far.

If you want to think about transporting them, I stuck some magnetic sheets to the bases and then put the models on the inside of an old biscuit tin which fits inside the dreadfleet box. You don't want to buy an entire army carry case for them like GW suggests.

[Red Skullz]

Looks great so far! I`ve played a fair few games and it`s great fun I would say. Very much a beer& pretzel game but also something that your better half could like. Mine and a mates wife love the game and that`s cool

I would recommend googling Man O War. You can find the three rulebooks for free download. A lot of great images there for some unique ships that can easily be added to friendly gaming. The ship & captain rules aren`t that complicated.

R

[pw]

Thanks for the kind comments. It's thanks to them that I managed to drag myself to the paint station to finish of Scabarus, the Skaven fish-monstrosity:



Painting this thing was fairly quick but building it was a nightmare. I managed to snap the mast in two places trying to get it into place and had to pin the bottom half and, worse, replace the top spindly mast with a pin which was far too fiddly for my liking. A five minute job ended up taking over an hour (mainly filled with me cursing in a most piratical fashion).

And a few more islands:



As for why the standard GW scheme. It's mainly a speed thing, I find picking colour schemes time consuming and I rather like the GW ones in this case. I suspect there's also part of me that wants them to look 'proper'!

Tomorrow it's gaming night (maybe even Dreadfleet...) but next on the paint station it's the Dwarf ship and some other smaller bits (I really ought to do the little Skaven 'cog' to go with Scabarus).

To those of you who've already painted Dreadfleet, please do show some pictures, I can always do with some inspiration.